Thursday, July 19, 2012

The Best Books on Preaching--Part 10

Continuing
with this series on the best books on preaching, we get to a book that goes
into a bit of different direction than some of the others. Michael Fabarez’s book, Preaching That Changes Lives,
is a book that reaches for a couple of areas of preaching. First, he believes that preaching can indeed
change lives and then he goes into the reason that it does so. This works around the paramount issue of
application. If there are not any areas
of application that the preaching brings to the ears of the hearer, a call for
change, for transformation and action, then we are just wasting our breath.

Paul said
that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for
doctrine, reproof, rebuke, and instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). Instruction in righteousness is the task that
preaching uses to help the church to see how to walk in this world. Preaching has to be more than just the
transference of facts about God that comes from an academic track, it has to be
a presentation of Truth that helps us to see above the murky, humanistic, and
godless views that this world touts on an hourly basis.

Fabarez
spends the first two chapters writing about the power of preaching and
believing that preaching can help change lives.
In chapter 3, he will greatly provoke you by seeking to determine if the
preaching is changing the preacher’s life. He starts with three very inflaming
sentences:

The personal life of the preacher is the
foundation upon which his every sermon stands.
He certainly cannot expect to be used by God to change lives if his own
life is stagnant. The New Testament’s
emphasis on the character requirements of those entrusted with teaching
responsibilities should be ample proof of this (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1), yet it is
far from the only proof.

In this
chapter there is a very heart-searching segment that deals with unconverted
preachers. Years ago, I used to scoff at
the idea of thinking that a pastor could be preaching, counseling, leading, and
taking care of all the trappings of a church and not be converted. This was beyond my ability to
comprehend. However as age and
experience has come my way, it appears after wrestling with a passage in the
Sermon on the Mount long enough, I finally have come to understand that an
unconverted man can do all kinds of heroic, admired, and noble things and still
be in an unconverted state. Consider
what Jesus said:

Matthew 7:21-23
KJV Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven. [22] Many will say to me in
that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have
cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? [23] And then will I profess unto them, I
never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

That should
place everyone who is reading this blog into a serious, soul-searching
mode. Have I really been converted? Fabarez quotes Richard Baxter on this matter:

See that the work of saving grace be
thoroughly wrought in your own souls.
Take heed to yourselves, lest you be void of that saving grace which you
offer to others, and be strangers to the effectual working of that gospel which
you preach; and lest, while you proclaim to the world the necessity of a
Savior, your own hearts should neglect him, and you should miss of an interest
in him and his saving benefits. Take
heed to yourselves, lest you perish, while you call upon others to take heed of
perishing.

Do you ever
consider how many unconverted preachers will get up to preach this coming
Sunday? All looks well outwardly but inwardly?
? ? This is why every preacher needs to
be reading books that cause him to think in this manner. Fabarez continues in this chapter about the
importance of spiritual disciplines such as Bible reading and prayer.

In chapter 4,
the author puts forth some helpful hints to help a preacher to connect the text
to the congregation. These hints are
given as principles of study so that he will be able to take the Scripture and
put it into a point of application. One
of the things that he points out is the necessity of seeking out the imperative
verbs or the commands that are given in the Scripture. You will benefit from reading this chapter
particularly when he starts working with the process of application for
yourself and those who hear you.

As Brother
Jolley would say, “The price of the book is worth this sentence/paragraph/chapter!” I think the price is worth chapter 6. It is about the prayer connection to the
message you are about to preach. He
notes on old E. M. Bounds quote on prayer:

A ministry may be a very thoughtful ministry
without prayer; the preacher may secure fame and popularity without prayer; the
whole machinery of the preacher’s life and work may be run without the oil of
prayer or with scarcely enough to grease one cog; but no ministry can be a
spiritual one, securing holiness in the preacher and in his people, without
prayer being made an evident and controlling force.

That kind of
advice is pretty easy to forget when we have all the trendy little toys to help
us “do” church. iPads, internet sermons,
mp3’s, and computer-generated Bible programs galore can choke the life out of
the preacher and subsequently choke the soul out of a church! Prayer must be a priority in my life (yours
too!)!

Fabarez goes
as far as to say that we ought to schedule prayer into every day of our
pastoral calling. But he also very
helpfully gives you a pattern of how to pray for your preaching. The more specific that we are in our prayer
for our preaching the better off it will be to help someone. Preaching without praying is like asking a
surgeon to use a scalpel that hasn’t been through the hands, soap, and heat of
a component tech working in central sterile.
Our soul must be sterilized of the world and ourselves before we do this
most important task.

He notes that
we should pray for the crafting of the sermon by five different requests:

1.Pray
for it to be a part of your own life.

2.Pray
for the protection of your study time.

3.Pray
for God’s guidance that you will rightly divide the Word of Truth.

4.Pray
that the words you use will be effective to communicate Truth.

5.Pray
that you will have insight into the needs of the hearers as you prepare.

He also gives
some suggestions to pray for the actual delivery of the message:

1.Pray
that people will come to hear the Word.

2.Pray
that they will come in the right frame of mind to hear the Word (remember the
four soils?).

3.Pray
that God will guard against distractions taking place in the delivery.

4.Pray
that God will help you to use clear words so that understanding, illumination,
and revelation will take place.

5.Ask
God to help you preach the most effective, fruitful, and powerful sermon you
will ever preach. (To do this regularly
ought to be the desire in all of us who preach!)

He also gives
the necessity of praying for a victory in the spiritual battle of preaching.

1.Pray
that people will put the message into practice.

2.Pray
that the sermon will not be mentally compartmentalized and left at church.

3.Pray
that the application will be contagious among those who hear.

4.Pray
that the sermon will be delivered repeatedly and that they cannot get away from
the Word.

Chapter 7 is
also a good chapter because it speaks of the time and thought requirements that
goes into preaching a life-changing message.
This chapter rang a tone that Brother Griffin used to mention in my TBC
days. He would tell us that he could
tell how much we loved God by two books that we all had in our possession. A check-book (gone by the way of ATM cards
now) and our date book because he said that he could tell how much priority God
had by where we spent our time and money.
Fabarez goes at this same principle when he writes about the priority of
preaching. How much time we spend with
it can give an exact idea about how important it is to us. (You might revisit the Discipline of Study
blogs that appeared here sometime back on Jeff Arnold, John Carroll, Ben Weeks, Doug White, J. H. Osborne, Jason Calhoun, Scott Graham) He encourages the preacher not to be lazy and
a time-waster.

In chapter 9,
Fabarez takes a sacred cow by the head and makes him a gourmet burger. He exhorts us to beware of people-centered
sermons. This could be that old
encouragement that came from a previous generation to find a need and then
preach to that need. I drank that
Kool-Aid pretty good in my early days. . . No More! No Mas!
Never again! I don’t preach to
meet the needs of people, I preach to magnify and glorify God! That is the sole purpose of preaching! Trendy pop psychology has almost effectively
emasculated the Word of God and now the modern day church is in a horrible
state of spiritual malnourishment.

Faberez gives
some helpful guidelines for effective preaching:

Clarify the effects of sin—Without Jesus Christ humanity’s efforts
at being good always falls short.

Display the power of Calvary—Every case of salvation will have to
start in understanding that man has sinned and only the work of Calvary can
save him.

Call for a response—The main work of preaching is a call for
conversion.

There are multiple
other things you will glean from reading this book on preaching. I commend this volume to you.